The National - High Violet (Double Black Vinyl)

'High Violet' is the Brooklyn quintet's first full-length release since 2007's acclaimed long-player 'Boxer' and all eleven tracks were recorded in the band's own studio in Brooklyn with further recording and mixing at Tarquin studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut with Peter Katis.

'High Violet' is a nervy, melodic, explosive and beautiful set of songs that find the band at the height of their collaborative powers. The music is wide-ranging in its moods, by turns intimate and rough, expansive and spare, full of stark angles and atmosphere. Berninger singing - wild, half-broken, sly - evokes a feeling of being haunted, by love, by paranoia, by something just out of reach.

'High Violet' maybe The National's most thematically twisted record to date but it somehow also manages to be their most infectious and immediate.